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From The New International, Vol. 13 No. 2, February 1947, pp. 62–63.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Editor:
Shirley Lawrence, in an otherwise acute analysis of psychiatric concepts as applied to mass reactions, injects a parenthetical assertion which cannot pass unchallenged. (The New International, Nov. ’46, p. 276)
In discussing Fromm’s description of the psychological basis of Nazism she states:
“The essence of the authoritarian structure is described as the simultaneous presence of sadistic and masochistic drives, the craving for power over men and the longing for submission. Everyone thus has somebody above him to submit to and somebody beneath him to dominate. (This is somewhat akin to the anti-Semitism of some Negroes.)”
At the outset it must be admitted that some Negroes are anti-Semitic. Gunnar Myrdal observes that anti-Semitism in this country generally just prior to the 2nd World War was “probably somewhat stronger than in Germany before the Nazi regime.” Negroes contribute their share of this dislike. Can their reaction be distinguished from that of other Americans?
Negroes in Harlem know Jews as their rent collectors, as their pawn brokers, as the clothing merchant selling the shoddy goods of today. Odette Harper Hines, whose story of police brutality appeared in the press last year, tells of other experiences in Alexandria, La., which are instructive on the attitude of the Southern Negro. The largest department store in that town is “Ginsburg’s.” Like other exclusive establishments in the deep South “Ginsburg’s” does not permit Negroes to darken its doors. However, “Ginsburg’s” employs white runners to intercept Negro women shoppers and offer to buy for them the articles in the store. When she declines such an offer, she is cursed volubly. The Jews who conform to the Southern pattern in order to ply their trades tend to stir up even more antagonism than is exhibited against other whites. It is as if the Negroes felt that the Jew was showing the same kind of prejudice against Negroes that he protested about when visited on Jews.
Again Myrdal notes the real basis of the anti-Jewish feeling.
“I have observed in the big cities a certain amount of anti-Semitism among Negroes, which is rather natural as Jews in the role of businessmen and real estate owners are frequently the ones among ’the whites who are in closest contact with the Negro and are thus likely to be identified as the exploiters of the Negro people ...”
It might be added that the Jews as newcomers among employers have a position less secure than “Aryan” bosses and so have the reputation of driving their workers more.
Hitherto, it has always been concluded by serious investigators that the Negroes were at the very bottom of the scale in our society – below the European national minorities, Chinese, Japanese, Jews, and even the Mexicans. (See Myrdal, American Dilemma, p. 53.) But Shirley Lawrence evidently thinks that anti-Semitic Negroes conceive themselves as superior to Jews. She thereby assumes a mass paranoia completely unsupported in fact.
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